As a design professional, I stopped specifying, single sex toilet rooms in businesses years ago. Toilet rooms should be single user and should be unisex, and handicap accessible. We are not cattle. We don’t need to have segregated gang bathrooms like in prisons. I am retired now, but I call on all architects and engineers to get with the program and stop designing segregated restrooms. Segregation is not equality. It never works.
I saw a sign on the bathroom door in a business yesterday with the classic bathroom sign symbol for a man, a women, nonbinary person, and an alien and underneath said "Please wash your hands after using the bathroom."
I thought yeah, exactly, the uproar shouldn't be about WHO uses the bathroom, it should be about making sure people wash their fucking hands!!!
Easy to say until you're unemployable and can't afford to live.
I'm already there. I'm so fucked it isn't even funny anymore.
I'm literally at the point where if I don't find some kind of job I'm going to erase myself rather than go out on the streets to starve.
Not like I can go back at this point. My name has been changed and I will never pass as a man. My BC is in a red state so that will always F me. There is no closet for me to run back to. Only the sweet sweet release of finality.
I'm sorry you're unable to find work. I'm unemployed as well and can't get an interview to save my life. All of my documents have long since been changed and I can't pass as the gender I was assigned at birth either. I'm midway through my surgical transition and am fearful of being stuck in a body that is unfinished. I do hope you stay and can find some relief. I refuse to be erased and am focusing on building community in the red county in the blue state I live in. I'm not your enemy.
Julie, Jesse, please know that you are seen and valued. Your perspective is incredibly important so I hope you can/will keep using your voice. No question, your life matters, regardless of employment status or haters aholery. Sadly I don’t have perfect solutions either nor am I in a position to hire. The hurdles you face today must feel immense. Regardless please know you are valuable and there are more people in your corner than you may realize. Esp when public officials carry out performative aholery, hurting vulnerable folks who aren’t doing anything wrong nor hurting anyone and hurting them for no good reason. We’re in a particularly terrible time but eventually that storm cloud will shift towards something else. Sending hope and (consensual) hugs FWIW ❤️
Julie, I beg you to hang in there however you can. We are all scrambling to sort out the chaos of this new regime right now. We're only 11 days in. I think in the coming months that we will have built new resources - knitted our own safety nets as a community, as it were. I think you will also see a lot of court challenges. They won't all be successful, obviously, but I think SOME will be. So I think things will be somewhat better fairly soon, after we dig out from the rubble of the first brutal attack.
If I might suggest a resource for you... and I preface it by saying that there is isn't even a drop of spirituality in me, NOR am I making any suggestions for you beyond the pragmatic: Find a Unitarian Universalist church, and ask them how they can help you find resources, perhaps employment. Unitarians are very liberal, and they have offered themselves as safe-havens to trans people in communities where I have lived. Their members are often wealthy and influential. There's also the MCC church, and the Friends Church (quakers).
If you haven't tried already, you might be able to find a job in customer service or tech support that allows you to work from home. I have encountered a surprisingly high number of trans people in telephone support, and who can even guess who is on the other end of text/chat support?
And finally, for emotional support, please reach out to the Trevor Project people. They're "OUR" people, and they've been through a lot of the same crap that we have. Find them here:
I spent 6 months living out of my car in 2024, but finally found a place to call home (in Greeley, CO) and made do with gig work, plus I am on Social Security. One's contributuioin to the resistance is simply continuing to breath, and taking one step forward at a time when we are going backwards. Best wishes, dears. Diana
I don't know if these are an option for you, but I have been doing some research online and came across two organizations that help trans people relocate to more welcoming states in the US. One is Trans Continental Pipeline (720-295-1741, https://tcpipeline.org/) in Colorado and Trans Relocation Project (https://www.transrelocationproject.com/) in Oregon and Washington. There are probably others I haven't yet come across and many that are still trying to organize. There might be organizations or social media sites where you could post a mutual aid request. I feel your pain. Please stay with us. Trans Lifeline has been a life-saver many times for my trans daughter, 877-565-8860.
Please don't think that way. There is a a job, a home, a love for you. When you're this low in spirit is when they win. A loss of YOU insures a victory for them. Don't let them claim you as a victory.
Contact your local Crisis Line. They've helped me on 2 occasions. You've come so far. Don't quit now, Julie
I lost my business in 2022 to attacks from proud boys that resulted in the destruction of our historic home, and severed animals heads being left on my door step. My wife has been heckled, harassed, doxxed, and her nudes leaked to the internet by far right types who literally stole them off of her phone while doing electrical work. The niece of the Maga republican running locally doxxed us and called us pedophiles, groomers, on the dudes campaign page and literally turned us into pariahs in a community we had existed in for two decades and out without problem.
We kept to ourselves, we didn't socialize, we didn't rock the boat, I never fought a termination in my field over "not sharing the values of our company or clients", we never had a friend under 25 and it was still not enough for these people.
I sold everything and fled in 2023 to a blue state and now it's nationwide. We have enough financials to last two more years but after that we are sunk.
My field is transphobic as fuck and dominated by far right types. There is no room for me and factually nobody is going to hire someone my age for entry work in a completely new field I don't know where I can't make enough money to make ends meet.
I don't need a crisis line. I'm almost 40. I'm not in crisis. I'm stating facts.
There comes a point where you have to weigh your quality of life with quantity of life. This is something every elder faces. No different from someone with a cancer diagnosis.
I'm so sorry that you and your wife have had to live through this. It's beyond wrong.
I'm 66yo, so I'm very aware of the burdens that you face. Belive it, or not, your age and experience may be a benefit.
I mentioned Crisis Line because you alluded to self harm. No offense intended.
I'm in Washington. A blue State divided, literally by mountains. The West side is VERY LGBTQ friendly. It shows. I consider myself fortunate in that respect.
What you two are experiencing is sickening, and as an American, it disgusts me. I'm hopeful that it will resolve.
I can't help to change what is happening to you and your wife. I wish that I could. I can offer you hope and a change for the positive soon.
I think I can relate to what Julie is feeling. I am a professional, I transitioned in the middle 90's and had accomplished all my document changes by the late 90's. I was lucky in that I was able to be pass well enough, I went to the west coast. I did not reveal my gender identity to anyone when I moved. By the 2000's I was getting into groove with my career, I guess people call that living stealth. By some point you figure some of the challenges of being trans are ones that you have faced already, and that most of those are in the past. You figure the remaining challenges are dealing with doctors, the health care system, minor governmental challenges or inconveniences, or the plethora of issues that come with being trans that you just we all likely have to manage and work through via regular self care. Now, Trump is basically erasing what I feel like I worked so hard to accomplish, I managed to get through the obstacle course that life put out there, transition with no help, maintain my sanity, be a productive and contributing tax paying citizen and now F$%# FACE ORANGE TURD is telling me I cannot have a passport that matches the gender of my other documents and that I do not exist!!!! yeah it feels pretty bleak. I do say hang in there and do not self-harm. My anger and spite prevent me from doing that personally, but I do feel you Julie, trust me.
Do they literally have anything better to do? Maybe actually improve the lives of people with things like their rent, their income, or access to medical care? Oh yeah, they’re completely incapable of actual governing, and only can make lives hellish for minorities. Evil people all around
Erin, thanks for putting in the work. I live in DC. I feel like I’ve been just the smallest step ahead since this started. I’d rather get the bad news from you than be surprised. Much love and appreciation.
It’s the ultimate distraction. Pay no attention to the planes crashing, the stock market crashing and the wave of spreading tuberculosis, we have a transphobia as our primary focus! This is going to fall apart, just wait!
I’m. So. Sorry. So sorry you and the trans community and those who love them and care about them have to go through this gauntlet of malice. We had a rousing rally at the Indiana Statehouse today, reaffirming our determination to reject their claims on the rights of our loved ones. We will keep working as long as it takes.
It's funny, the only ones with a "gender ideology" and pushing for it are anti-trans cis bigots.
"Gender ideology" and "transgenderism" are both terms they invented to act as indirect labels for "trans people" so they can say things like "eradicate transgenderism" without completely sounding genocidal (to the ignorant at least). They are otherwise nonsense words that don't hold a shred of substance or applicability. Their only purpose is implying trans people are some kind of organized cult, a group of "others" of differing beliefs and a means of "conversion". Another monolith, another "Them" for their Us vs Them game. A war game just to desperately fend off their inferiority complex, a toxic battle with no win condition, but an inevitable destruction of everything around them. An insecure bunch fighting to feel the tallest by flattening the scenery around them and everyone in it.
As someone that served 20 years of honorable and faithful service, at least that is what my retirement papers say, I take exception to the terrible tangerine and his opinion.
Life sure was a whole lot easier when I was dead inside and simply shuffling day to day in denial, as apparently we are history's greatest monsters, and it's like the entire world has made it their sole focus to eradicate us.
And now that I have feelings, my heart breaks for all the young transgender children who finally had a medical solution to otherwise living a constant hell of feeling "wrong" and like some kind of perverse freak...and now these evil fuckers are snatching that hope away by denying that care right when it could do the most good...and forcing them to go through the wrong puberty and see their body betray them every single day.
All while these bigots twist their own failures and anger at the injustices they've suffered from *everything else* completely unrelated to our struggle to merely exist, and transform it into relentless hate and fury against US...as if we are the cause of all that is wrong in the world.
The hate just keeps piling up inexorably, slowly starving the tiny candles of light and hope in the world of their requisite oxygen...until only darkness is left. My heart shatters for those kids growing up in this relentless and unnecessary cruelty.
Erin, how can I send you more money? Substack won't let me increase my subscription amount and I've gifted subscriptions to the people I know who I'm out to. If you have a PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp etc. or any way to just send you cash, please let me know. I want to support your efforts with the new writer hire.
I verified this is correct (Venmo = erin888), but please don't take my word for it, there are occasional haters who get in here and I could just see somebody setting up a fake Venmo with the name Erin in it.
To independently verify search your email for "erininthemorn@substack.com". Scroll all the way back to the beginning of the search results and you should see one called "Welcome To Erin In The Morning // Information For You". The Venmo is mentioned in that email.
Thanks again Quinn for sharing this, I've been searching for it for some time!
Happy to help! As one more layer of verification for folks who don't have their welcome email: Go to https://www.erininthemorning.com/about, navigate to Erin's linktree, and there's a link to her Venmo there. Might also be helpful for those of us (me) who are anxious about accidentally typing in the wrong user name when searching on Venmo.
these Republicans are so stupidly sure of themselves even when they only had a second grade education in biology. They know nothing and are mean and cruel.
The stress of the relentless daily assault is turning physical: constant migraine, can't eat, can't sleep, jaundice, puking. I'm not ill, this is what my body does after weeks with no relief from fight or flight. I remember that i am generally happy and my life is good, but right now i am faint and it feels like my body is shutting down. I was healthy and active before 11/5 - living in shock and terror since that day, because i knew exactly what they would do with control of the courts, congress and the executive. Thanks for asking.
As a design professional, I stopped specifying, single sex toilet rooms in businesses years ago. Toilet rooms should be single user and should be unisex, and handicap accessible. We are not cattle. We don’t need to have segregated gang bathrooms like in prisons. I am retired now, but I call on all architects and engineers to get with the program and stop designing segregated restrooms. Segregation is not equality. It never works.
I saw a sign on the bathroom door in a business yesterday with the classic bathroom sign symbol for a man, a women, nonbinary person, and an alien and underneath said "Please wash your hands after using the bathroom."
I thought yeah, exactly, the uproar shouldn't be about WHO uses the bathroom, it should be about making sure people wash their fucking hands!!!
Pass a god damn law about that.
Yes! The only sign needed on the door says “bathroom”. And anybody can use it.
Yes, exactly! Maybe that's something you can write a post about, or opinion piece?
Yes, PLEASE! And thank you!
They're obsessed with us. We will not be erased.
Oh we won't?
Easy to say until you're unemployable and can't afford to live.
I'm already there. I'm so fucked it isn't even funny anymore.
I'm literally at the point where if I don't find some kind of job I'm going to erase myself rather than go out on the streets to starve.
Not like I can go back at this point. My name has been changed and I will never pass as a man. My BC is in a red state so that will always F me. There is no closet for me to run back to. Only the sweet sweet release of finality.
That's reality and I'm not alone.
I'm sorry you're unable to find work. I'm unemployed as well and can't get an interview to save my life. All of my documents have long since been changed and I can't pass as the gender I was assigned at birth either. I'm midway through my surgical transition and am fearful of being stuck in a body that is unfinished. I do hope you stay and can find some relief. I refuse to be erased and am focusing on building community in the red county in the blue state I live in. I'm not your enemy.
You're not my enemy but this is how they aim to erase us and there's nothing we can do to stop it.
All the bumpersticker slogans in the world don't make a hill of beans if you can't eat, or have a place to live.
So yes, they will erase us. Community will do nothing to save us. It's over in the US.
Julie, Jesse, please know that you are seen and valued. Your perspective is incredibly important so I hope you can/will keep using your voice. No question, your life matters, regardless of employment status or haters aholery. Sadly I don’t have perfect solutions either nor am I in a position to hire. The hurdles you face today must feel immense. Regardless please know you are valuable and there are more people in your corner than you may realize. Esp when public officials carry out performative aholery, hurting vulnerable folks who aren’t doing anything wrong nor hurting anyone and hurting them for no good reason. We’re in a particularly terrible time but eventually that storm cloud will shift towards something else. Sending hope and (consensual) hugs FWIW ❤️
Julie, I beg you to hang in there however you can. We are all scrambling to sort out the chaos of this new regime right now. We're only 11 days in. I think in the coming months that we will have built new resources - knitted our own safety nets as a community, as it were. I think you will also see a lot of court challenges. They won't all be successful, obviously, but I think SOME will be. So I think things will be somewhat better fairly soon, after we dig out from the rubble of the first brutal attack.
If I might suggest a resource for you... and I preface it by saying that there is isn't even a drop of spirituality in me, NOR am I making any suggestions for you beyond the pragmatic: Find a Unitarian Universalist church, and ask them how they can help you find resources, perhaps employment. Unitarians are very liberal, and they have offered themselves as safe-havens to trans people in communities where I have lived. Their members are often wealthy and influential. There's also the MCC church, and the Friends Church (quakers).
If you haven't tried already, you might be able to find a job in customer service or tech support that allows you to work from home. I have encountered a surprisingly high number of trans people in telephone support, and who can even guess who is on the other end of text/chat support?
And finally, for emotional support, please reach out to the Trevor Project people. They're "OUR" people, and they've been through a lot of the same crap that we have. Find them here:
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/get-help/
I spent 6 months living out of my car in 2024, but finally found a place to call home (in Greeley, CO) and made do with gig work, plus I am on Social Security. One's contributuioin to the resistance is simply continuing to breath, and taking one step forward at a time when we are going backwards. Best wishes, dears. Diana
#ViveLaTransistance!
I don't know if these are an option for you, but I have been doing some research online and came across two organizations that help trans people relocate to more welcoming states in the US. One is Trans Continental Pipeline (720-295-1741, https://tcpipeline.org/) in Colorado and Trans Relocation Project (https://www.transrelocationproject.com/) in Oregon and Washington. There are probably others I haven't yet come across and many that are still trying to organize. There might be organizations or social media sites where you could post a mutual aid request. I feel your pain. Please stay with us. Trans Lifeline has been a life-saver many times for my trans daughter, 877-565-8860.
Please don't think that way. There is a a job, a home, a love for you. When you're this low in spirit is when they win. A loss of YOU insures a victory for them. Don't let them claim you as a victory.
Contact your local Crisis Line. They've helped me on 2 occasions. You've come so far. Don't quit now, Julie
I lost my business in 2022 to attacks from proud boys that resulted in the destruction of our historic home, and severed animals heads being left on my door step. My wife has been heckled, harassed, doxxed, and her nudes leaked to the internet by far right types who literally stole them off of her phone while doing electrical work. The niece of the Maga republican running locally doxxed us and called us pedophiles, groomers, on the dudes campaign page and literally turned us into pariahs in a community we had existed in for two decades and out without problem.
We kept to ourselves, we didn't socialize, we didn't rock the boat, I never fought a termination in my field over "not sharing the values of our company or clients", we never had a friend under 25 and it was still not enough for these people.
I sold everything and fled in 2023 to a blue state and now it's nationwide. We have enough financials to last two more years but after that we are sunk.
My field is transphobic as fuck and dominated by far right types. There is no room for me and factually nobody is going to hire someone my age for entry work in a completely new field I don't know where I can't make enough money to make ends meet.
I don't need a crisis line. I'm almost 40. I'm not in crisis. I'm stating facts.
There comes a point where you have to weigh your quality of life with quantity of life. This is something every elder faces. No different from someone with a cancer diagnosis.
I'm so sorry that you and your wife have had to live through this. It's beyond wrong.
I'm 66yo, so I'm very aware of the burdens that you face. Belive it, or not, your age and experience may be a benefit.
I mentioned Crisis Line because you alluded to self harm. No offense intended.
I'm in Washington. A blue State divided, literally by mountains. The West side is VERY LGBTQ friendly. It shows. I consider myself fortunate in that respect.
What you two are experiencing is sickening, and as an American, it disgusts me. I'm hopeful that it will resolve.
I can't help to change what is happening to you and your wife. I wish that I could. I can offer you hope and a change for the positive soon.
Take care, Julie.
I think I can relate to what Julie is feeling. I am a professional, I transitioned in the middle 90's and had accomplished all my document changes by the late 90's. I was lucky in that I was able to be pass well enough, I went to the west coast. I did not reveal my gender identity to anyone when I moved. By the 2000's I was getting into groove with my career, I guess people call that living stealth. By some point you figure some of the challenges of being trans are ones that you have faced already, and that most of those are in the past. You figure the remaining challenges are dealing with doctors, the health care system, minor governmental challenges or inconveniences, or the plethora of issues that come with being trans that you just we all likely have to manage and work through via regular self care. Now, Trump is basically erasing what I feel like I worked so hard to accomplish, I managed to get through the obstacle course that life put out there, transition with no help, maintain my sanity, be a productive and contributing tax paying citizen and now F$%# FACE ORANGE TURD is telling me I cannot have a passport that matches the gender of my other documents and that I do not exist!!!! yeah it feels pretty bleak. I do say hang in there and do not self-harm. My anger and spite prevent me from doing that personally, but I do feel you Julie, trust me.
Do you know about the Portland and Colorado programs to help you move to a safer State?
these people are going to tear the entire government apart over this "gender ideology" obsession. when will it end?
Do they literally have anything better to do? Maybe actually improve the lives of people with things like their rent, their income, or access to medical care? Oh yeah, they’re completely incapable of actual governing, and only can make lives hellish for minorities. Evil people all around
Erin, thanks for putting in the work. I live in DC. I feel like I’ve been just the smallest step ahead since this started. I’d rather get the bad news from you than be surprised. Much love and appreciation.
It’s the ultimate distraction. Pay no attention to the planes crashing, the stock market crashing and the wave of spreading tuberculosis, we have a transphobia as our primary focus! This is going to fall apart, just wait!
I pray you are correct.
Infuriates me how they bash us over the head with the term “identity politics” when they’re the ones doing this shit over and over and over again.
I’m. So. Sorry. So sorry you and the trans community and those who love them and care about them have to go through this gauntlet of malice. We had a rousing rally at the Indiana Statehouse today, reaffirming our determination to reject their claims on the rights of our loved ones. We will keep working as long as it takes.
Thank you so much!!
It's funny, the only ones with a "gender ideology" and pushing for it are anti-trans cis bigots.
"Gender ideology" and "transgenderism" are both terms they invented to act as indirect labels for "trans people" so they can say things like "eradicate transgenderism" without completely sounding genocidal (to the ignorant at least). They are otherwise nonsense words that don't hold a shred of substance or applicability. Their only purpose is implying trans people are some kind of organized cult, a group of "others" of differing beliefs and a means of "conversion". Another monolith, another "Them" for their Us vs Them game. A war game just to desperately fend off their inferiority complex, a toxic battle with no win condition, but an inevitable destruction of everything around them. An insecure bunch fighting to feel the tallest by flattening the scenery around them and everyone in it.
As someone that served 20 years of honorable and faithful service, at least that is what my retirement papers say, I take exception to the terrible tangerine and his opinion.
So, this is only a suggestion I be batting this around in my head
We need to organize this across the country.
We pick a day, a time, and a place, here in Houston it’s the Leland Federal Building
Every mayor city and every states capital.
We alert the press of a major protest at such and such a building
We will need about 10 to 20 of us. At designated time we go into the Federal buildings
Across the country, and file quietly into our respective bathrooms to use the facilities, openly, but with no fuss and no muss. We then leave.
This is the tactic MLK used…..
Since there is no enforcement mechanism, what would they do, and it makes a mockery of these stupid executive orders.
Jessica.
I'm all for this. I am in Massachusetts. If you start this, sign me up!
PS - Soulforce.org used to do Freedom Rides to anti-queer Christian colleges so they would have good ideas about how to organize such a protest.
I’m so fucking pissed. Fuck anyone who voted for him.
Life sure was a whole lot easier when I was dead inside and simply shuffling day to day in denial, as apparently we are history's greatest monsters, and it's like the entire world has made it their sole focus to eradicate us.
And now that I have feelings, my heart breaks for all the young transgender children who finally had a medical solution to otherwise living a constant hell of feeling "wrong" and like some kind of perverse freak...and now these evil fuckers are snatching that hope away by denying that care right when it could do the most good...and forcing them to go through the wrong puberty and see their body betray them every single day.
All while these bigots twist their own failures and anger at the injustices they've suffered from *everything else* completely unrelated to our struggle to merely exist, and transform it into relentless hate and fury against US...as if we are the cause of all that is wrong in the world.
The hate just keeps piling up inexorably, slowly starving the tiny candles of light and hope in the world of their requisite oxygen...until only darkness is left. My heart shatters for those kids growing up in this relentless and unnecessary cruelty.
Erin, how can I send you more money? Substack won't let me increase my subscription amount and I've gifted subscriptions to the people I know who I'm out to. If you have a PayPal, Venmo, Cashapp etc. or any way to just send you cash, please let me know. I want to support your efforts with the new writer hire.
I had the same question and figured it out . I will send you guidance later
Post it here so others who are looking to can know as well
wonderful, thank you!
Erin’s Venmo is Erin888, per her BlueSky account. I sent her money yesterday.
Awesome! I sent her money today.
I subscribed yesterday, and my welcome email said Erin’s Venmo is erin888.
All -
I verified this is correct (Venmo = erin888), but please don't take my word for it, there are occasional haters who get in here and I could just see somebody setting up a fake Venmo with the name Erin in it.
To independently verify search your email for "erininthemorn@substack.com". Scroll all the way back to the beginning of the search results and you should see one called "Welcome To Erin In The Morning // Information For You". The Venmo is mentioned in that email.
Thanks again Quinn for sharing this, I've been searching for it for some time!
Happy to help! As one more layer of verification for folks who don't have their welcome email: Go to https://www.erininthemorning.com/about, navigate to Erin's linktree, and there's a link to her Venmo there. Might also be helpful for those of us (me) who are anxious about accidentally typing in the wrong user name when searching on Venmo.
Awesome, thanks! I made it to the "about" page in my quest for the holy grail but didn't think to click on link tree.
I like that this is a link which is integrated right into her Venmo.
Thank you!
these Republicans are so stupidly sure of themselves even when they only had a second grade education in biology. They know nothing and are mean and cruel.
I just wanted to ask how everyone is holding up under all of this. I'm feeling psychologically attacked, and I'm not even transgender.
The stress of the relentless daily assault is turning physical: constant migraine, can't eat, can't sleep, jaundice, puking. I'm not ill, this is what my body does after weeks with no relief from fight or flight. I remember that i am generally happy and my life is good, but right now i am faint and it feels like my body is shutting down. I was healthy and active before 11/5 - living in shock and terror since that day, because i knew exactly what they would do with control of the courts, congress and the executive. Thanks for asking.